We spent over two hours going through binders full of weekly time sheets, and when we’d finished we’d established starting dates for everyone on our list. Six names came off because they hadn’t worked the job long enough, and there were four names left: Cheryl Compton and Mitchell Vetter, from Brill, and Evan Mills and Vijay Desai, from Parsons.
“Any of these names jump out at you as being more or less likely?” I asked him. He shook his head.
“Could be any of ’em,” he said.
“Even Compton?” Neary shook his head again and ran a big hand over the back of his neck.
“I’d like to think otherwise, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know better.” He put the last binder back on its shelf. “You have a plan in mind?”
“I have something. It might be reaching to call it a plan.” Neary looked at his watch.
“Maybe some food will encourage it,” he said.
And it did. I bought him dinner at After the Heat, an all-night barbecue place in the meatpacking district. We had ribs and potato salad and corn bread, some wicked pecan pie, and a lot of strong coffee. And while we ate, and afterward in the nearly empty restaurant, we developed something like a plan. It was not perfect, not by a long shot. It was inelegant and unsubtle and had no shortage of risk. But its faults were offset, at least in part, by the fact that it wouldn’t take a lot of time to set up or carry out. Since time was something we had little of, that was a big plus.
“I’ll talk to my management tonight. If they have no issues, I’ll arrange what we need tomorrow morning. Assuming these four guys are in the office, we can do it tomorrow afternoon,” Neary said.
I nodded. “The sooner the better.”
It had stopped raining by the time we stepped outside, but the air had turned colder and the wind had stiffened. The streets were empty. It took a while for Neary to find a cab, and I waited with him in silence. When one finally came, he gave me a small nod, got in, and rode away. I looked at my watch. Five minutes till Tuesday.
I was at once exhausted and wired, drained by a day that seemed five days long, excited and anxious about tomorrow, and jumpy from too much coffee. I walked home, through the wet, quiet streets. Overhead, the thick mantle of cloud that had covered the city all day had been shattered by the wind. Now the pieces slid rapidly across the sky, and high above them I saw a pale moon floating, amid paler stars.
Chapter Twenty-three
I got little sleep that night, and none of it was good. Despite the late hour, I’d called Mike Metz when I got home. I’d told him about the list of names Neary and I had come up with, and about our plan. He’d told me about Pierro.
“He’s on the ragged edge, John. If this doesn’t end soon, he’s going to come apart,” Mike said.
“Things broke our way with DiPaolo. That was a piece of good news,” I said.
“It helped. But he’s desperate to get this behind him. He’s got the money together already.”
“And if this payment isn’t the end of it-if it’s just the beginning? He’s flipping out after a few weeks. What’s going to happen six months from now, or a year? It’s not too late for him to go to the cops, or make a preemptive move with his management at French,” I said.
“I pointed all that out to him, as I have a dozen times before. He doesn’t want to hear it.”
“You tell him about Nassouli?” I asked.
“Only some of it. I don’t want to do anything to queer our deal with Shelly. But I told him that the feds had convinced us that Nassouli was not involved.”
“How did he take it?”
“It didn’t seem to register. He didn’t ask any questions, didn’t want to talk about it at all.” I’d thought about that for a while. Mike’s loud yawn had brought me back. “Call me when you confirm things with Neary,” he’d said, and hung up.
It’d been one-thirty when I eased myself into bed. I’d spent the next four and a half hours trying in vain to find a comfortable position, while jumbled fragments of the day’s events replayed themselves in my head. I awoke gritty-eyed and sore.
I took a long shower and shaved slowly. Then I wrapped up my ribs, and dressed in jeans and a black turtleneck. I went to the fridge and drank a quart of orange juice from the carton. I felt okay-clean, clear-headed, fit. But I was restless and impatient, anxious to hear from Neary, eager to get started. Tension hummed in the pit of my stomach. I kept moving back and forth in front of my windows.
The feeling of fitness, I knew, was illusory. I’d stiffen up again in an hour or so, and if I didn’t get some sleep, I’d be stupid and shaky by noon. The impatience was dangerous, and I needed to tamp it down. Today, if we were good and we got lucky, we’d grab hold of something more than smoke and shadow. It was not a day to get edgy or overeager. It was a day to keep my head in the game. What I needed was a long run, but breakfast and a walk would have to suffice. After that, maybe, I could catch some decent sleep.
I forwarded my calls to my cell phone. I was putting on my jacket when I heard a familiar noise from upstairs. Thump, thump-whump. I hunted around my kitchen counter for the business card I knew was there. Her home number was on the back.
“Let me buy you breakfast,” I said, when Jane Lu picked up, a little out of breath. There was a long moment of silence before she answered.
“I’ll meet you downstairs in twenty minutes,” she said.
Exactly twenty minutes later, Jane strode off the elevator. Her cropped black hair was still damp. She was wearing a silky purple turtleneck, well-cut black trousers, and black wing tip shoes. She had a long black coat on her arm and a black leather knapsack slung on her shoulder.
We walked around the corner to Rose Darling, a cozy, chintz-heavy place that stirs a mean bowl of oatmeal. We sat at a table near the front, in a large rectangle of sunlight. I ordered the oatmeal and a coffee. Jane ordered a muffin and tea. The waitress left, and we looked at each other for a while.
“No new injuries?” Jane asked.
I shook my head. “Same old ones, but they’re more colorful now.” She smiled a little, and asked how my case was going. I told her about it, omitting all the revealing specifics. She listened intently.
“With some luck, today could be the day,” I said.
“With some luck, you won’t collect any more bruises.” The waitress brought our drinks, and we sipped at them.
“Except for my sister reading me your resume, I don’t know much about you,” I said.
The little smile again, then she nodded. “Let’s see… My parents came over from the mainland in the sixties. They were out west for a while, then they moved to Boston. My dad’s a computer scientist, my mom’s an M.D. I’ve got a sister, Barbara, and a brother, Joe-both older. She’s in the math department at MIT, he does software. We were all born and raised in Cambridge. Just your typical overachieving Chinese family.”
“Lauren tells me you’re some kind of genius. I think that was the word she used.”
She made a small, dismissive gesture with her hand. “That’s a pretty strong word. But I am good at what I do.”
“How’d you end up in the CEO-for-hire business?”
She chuckled. “It was one of those right-place-at-the-right-time things. I was a management consultant, working on a job for a company that makes lasers. They were foundering and wanted someone to tell them what to do. It was obvious to me what their problems were, and what they had to do to fix them. But the partner I was working for didn’t see things the same way-and not for the first time. In fact, about the only thing we ever agreed on was that we couldn’t stand the sight of one another. So when he ordered me not to discuss my assessment with the client, I quit. Then I went to the company’s chairman and gave him my findings and my recommendations. And then I went home and started looking into Ph. D. programs. Two days later the chairman called me and made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. The rest is history.”